The first statement, by ABR, recounted the nightmares of a 69-year-old woman abused as a 10-year-old in Taree in 1954.

The second, from 38-year-old AQ, asked how McAlinden was "free to be around so many innocent young children" more than 30 years later, having abused her as an Adamstown girl in 1986 and 1987.

"Why did no one stop him before he got to me?" AQ asked in her statement, read by Zimmerman Services staff member Maureen O'Hearn.

Questioned by senior counsel assisting the inquiry, Julia Lonergan, Ms O'Hearn said she had met 28 victims of McAlinden.

She also added a potential four years to his criminal history when she told of meeting a woman abused by him in 1949.

In ABR's statement, she recounted how McAlinden had been put in charge of a girls' group, the Legion of Mary. She said McAlinden would drive a group of girls home after Legion meetings, and she was "always the last to be taken home".

He would drive the car to the bush, sexually assault her and then tell her he would know if she told anyone because he could read her mind.

She recalled a need to protect her family when McAlinden would turn up unannounced in the early 1970s, when she had a boy and two little girls of her own.

She only told her husband four years ago when McAlinden's crimes hit the media.

Expressing her anger in a belief that the Church "kept him hidden", ABR said "someone has to be held accountable".

AQ wrote of her family's active involvement in church life and of two years of McAlinden abusing her in the presbytery, the church, her home, the school playground and in his car.

"He got away with abusing me almost in front of people because everyone was blinded by his being a priest," AQ wrote.

As a mother of four, AQ said she had "carried the burdens of the Catholic Church for far too long" and did not want that burden "to fall on the shoulders of my precious children".

In earlier evidence before reading the statements, Ms O'Hearn said new victims were still coming forward, mostly referred to her by the police.

Ms O'Hearn, who began with Zimmerman Services in 2007, said many survivors of sexual abuse by clergy felt they needed the Church's "permission . . . figuratively speaking" to go to the police.

She said she showed the Church's commitment by providing practical help in dealing with the police and providing counselling and other help.

The final witness yesterday was Bishop William Wright, who said he expected to hear from victims "into the future" and offered a commitment to do "the best we can at any given time".

Summing up the inquiry's progress, Ms Lonergan said more than 100 summonses had been served to produce documents.

There had been more than 100 private hearings and interviews, including some internationally and interstate, she said.

There had been 33 in-camera (or closed) hearings and 41 witnesses had given evidence in eight weeks of open hearings.

Commissioner Margaret Cunneen said she would recommend the section of her report dealing with the open hearings be published "as soon as practicable".

Publication of the in-camera hearings section would likely be deferred because of "other potential processes" but she intended recommending her report be published "in its entirety" at an appropriate time

● At the start of yesterday's proceedings, counsel for the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, Lachlan Gyles, said Wednesday's Newcastle Herald report lacked balance in saying victims could either seek a financial settlement or go to the police but not do both.

He said the transcript showed people could return to Toward Healing once "police processes" were complete. Mr Gyles said clauses in Towards Healing strongly urging people to take their complaints to the police were added in 2003, not 2010 as reported.